Category Archives: Microsoft

And you can’t argue with it!
No! You can’t argue with me about it and even if you want to try, and the only reason why you would want to do such a thing is that you don’t have a clue what a bloke is, then first go to this link to learn what it really means.

Now more seriously. Here’s the little backstory about it. I own a company based in Québec named “Centre de Solutions Informatiques Inc.” or C.S.I. for short. Our team is based on developers and hardware crack that follows 63 technology related RSS feeds that publish around 1 280 news a day. We are basically pure and polished specialist in computers and we’re endlessly learning and improving ourselves. Technology is everything we like, everything we do and everything we live for. We’re so enthusiast that, as I said, we’ve started a company. Yes! That’s how bad we are infected.

We’ve taken a big time looking at the market and I can assure you that in our current service zone, there is just no one that will do a better job than us for better pricing and better time. To do this analysis, we used the latest technology in marketing which is… ours beloved clients! We actually used feedbacks from our clients to build our price tags. Anyway, enough advertising and here comes the story.

One bloke in the see
I (not we) currently deserve personalized services to 2 company and around 25 persons. That’s in fact rather good. But in the end, every single one of my clients keep on… deserting me! Yes! I have absolutely no idea why, but every time they’ve got a problem, they first call me, I then friendly give them consulting and they finally go off like they suddenly knows anything about the computer world, which they obviously don’t, and make an ash of it.

This annoy me so much that it made me write this post just so that I could cool down instead of bashing through the head of one of them that did it an other time just a day before I’m writing this. I will not go into the details to respect his privacy but, he actually made Windows XP installed on an Intel Core i7 computer! Now, if you’re a bloke about computers, which I’m not, you’ll already scream at him because you know that Windows XP just can’t handle a dual core correctly. And this is not a dual core, it’s a quad with hyper-threading which make it even more difficult. You need at least Windows Vista or Windows 7 to handle all of that power correctly but WAIT! Their’s more! This computer is actually… the latest iMac.

I’m not joking. This is true, I swear that this is true! Now I’ll show you an other time that I’m not a bloke in this kind of stuff. You see, Windows XP has horrible power saving features. In fact, it doesn’t support half the the power saving features that are on that brand new computer. Now you’re probably already laughing at me saying that this is a desktop computer and that it doesn’t need power saving features! WRONG! Let me show you my point with a simple table:

Component

Avg. consumption

CPU

85 watt

Memory

25 watt

Motherboard

15 watt

Graphic card

135 watt

Hard drive

5 watt

Monitor

50 watt

Total

315 watt

Now that look pretty normal, isn’t it? Nop; This is enormous! I have a server which has a very similar configuration to that and it’s doing 80. My Mac Pro is averaging 145 watts and it has 10 GB or HUNGRY fully buffered DDR2 memory and two old and not very economical Xeon 5400 series CPUs. That’s without counting the supercharged 8800 GT that benchmark like a 9800 GTX!

So, not only does he’s iMac now require a nuclear power plant to run, it also require an earth-sized power supply; which it hasn’t. The 2009 iMac has only a 365 watt power supply. Now you’re still laughing at me saying that 315 is smaller that 365. Well… Yes it is… But, this PSU only has 85% efficiency which move its maximum output to 5 watt less that the average needed. This could cause a problem.

Windows XP will basically kills my client’s computer. That’s how simple it is. By the way, if you’re interested, putting Windows Vista in it would decrease the consumption to 175 watt which is 45% less. That’s without saying that the performance would increase as Windows Vista is much better at handling multiple CPU cores.

The result
Not only this guy had an horrible services that will rot is computer on the mid/long run. It will also cost him 100 $ more to run his computer at the end of the year that it costed him if he installed Windows Vista in the first place. And here’s the interesting part: I didn’t even mentioned OS X yet. And here’s why: I’m not talking about dual booting or anything. The guy actually removed OS X 10.6 and put Windows XP in place claiming that it was a much lighter and faster operating system!

That basically means that my client, who decided to bought a Mac to give it a try, will not even see what OS X look like. Not to mention that OS X has even better power management capabilities than even Windows 7. Running Slow Leopard, that computer actually get down to 95 watt on average use which would save him 160 $ a year just in electricity.

The point
Every single one of my clients do that every single time. They always end up in my office begging for help to solve the issues that caused the idiot that they went to in the first place. And they do that, even when they are old friend of mine. I have absolutely nothing agains competition, in fact I even found it sporty, but when all the competition there is is that… I’d prefer to kick them in the face with a very, very big hammer.

Conclusion
That’s exactly why me and two of my friends started this company. We are so sure about this that we’re planing, building… no… it became hand-crafting, swinging and then throwing that hammer to their faces ourselves the best we can possibly do. We believe that average computer knowledge here in Québec sucks and we think we might just be what the province need to get up on its feet an finally learn how to appreciate that latest gadget that came out without having to ask the vendor how to turn it on.

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I’ve started a series of screen-cast on youtube that compare some basic features of Windows 7 and OS X Leopard from an end-user point of view. I try to keep a humoristic tone (specially when something goes wrong like in this first video :P). I do one take per OS unless something preventing me from publishing the video happen. The idea is to show how each OS react on a first try. The settings related to the tests where also rested to assure the authenticity of the video.

For the editing part, I try to keep it very close to the original. I will never cut a shot unless it’s preventing me from publishing the video. In that case, there will be a notice in the video. Everything is shot in HD to help you see what I’m doing during the screen-cast.

You can take a look on Youtube if you’re interested. The first part is about some basic file and screen sharing over different network type. Which one is easier to use and what kind of features are to be expected with the DEFAULT OS configuration.

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Not even one day after Windows 7 was officially released as RTM with build 7600 , it is now easier to find on P2P network than Windows Vista. Many people already installed it and every one, and I mean every one, can’t be more happy with this release. It seams that Windows 7 will be a very big seller on October 22th when it will get in store. Who knows, it might even be a bigger release than the iPhone 3G S gave us not even two months ago.

For the record, RTM stand for Release To Manufacturing which means that the actual version is the one who is currently being burned to disks. This version is 100% identical to the one you’ll get on the official release. You might wonder why they are waiting so long for this? Well it is because hardware makers are slow to react and need time to write drivers because they generally ignore the time where given on the beta version.

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Closed
MSN is a closed and proprietary protocol. As a result, you can’t use an other client than the official one without getting various issue. For instance, no third-party client will offer audio or video chat. They can also experience “network outage” because of an update on the servers that render them incompatible.

Official is bad
Even the Windows Live Messenger client is badly done. It can eat up 80 MB or memory without any reasons, it’s full of ads and worst than all, is not even cross-platform yet! Ho yes, there is a Messenger:mac client which doesn’t support audio and video chat and use a incredible 250 MB or RAM! An other thing, since it’s widely use, there’s viruses for it. Did you never received strange message from an other contact? Now you’re starting to see the wide picture.

Privacy free
Most people believe that the MSN network is secure and censor free. This is a very wrong belief. First of all, if you want to talk securely you need encryption which is only supported on third-party MSN client. Since over 80% of the MSN users depend on the official client, they simply can’t use encryption. And to add up to the so called privacy, every thing is monitored. Yes it is just software but we don’t know if the servers write communications logs. And one this is certain: there is a software that read every message sent since they are censored! Try to send a link with download.php in it. You’ll find it very difficult. did you ever saw something like “There was a problem in delivering the last message.”? That’s probably our censor friend working.

Never trust those who you don’t know
Here’s a little solution, if you can live without audio chat and video chat then third-party clients is the way to go. If you miss them too much, then be prepared to live with a RAM eater, a privacy sniffer and a virus friend. Or not? There is other solutions out there. MSN is not the only IM network out there. I’d recommend AIM since it’s probably the only one which is at complete opposite from MSN. It is an open source 100% cross-platform protocol with very light weight clients which doesn’t censor its users. And an other time, there’s nothing that force you to use the official client.

I hope some people will do the switch for their own benefit. Have a nice week.

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Windows, Windows and … Windows?
This post is dedicated to one person whom I talked with on YouTube for about a month. We were arguing about why Windows Vista might or might not be better than windows XP. I finally had to settle the discussion since the 500 character limit was making it go nowhere. My goal here is to expose an objective and detailed comparison between Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. I feel the necessity to include both Vista and 7 since more than 50% may skip Windows Vista and go strait to Windows 7. See this post as a continuation to this conversation. If you want to bring new fact from the dark, fell free to use the comment feature to do so. I’m pretty sure that this post will start a big fight so I’d like to make it clear : “My friend here tried it and said it was crap” is not a fact. It’s an observation and might be based on influenced perception and modified facts.

As an OS X, Windows, ex-OS 9 and ex-linux user, I’m one of the rare person who really are objective from an OS point of view. The fact that I tried and explored nearly every major OS that are and was in use during the last decade in a home user and business user way will serve as a basis on this review. With those knowledge, I’m able to show you who created what, why they did it and how it work under the hood. I will say it right now : Windows XP is definitely not the winner of this fight. That’s why I hope to bring you proves of that.

Before saying anything more, I want you to keep two things in mind : 1. What I just said about facts and perceptions is based on the Mojave experiment and was verified and proven many times; Google for more information. 2. If you don’t already remember them by heart, the release date of every Windows version since 3.1; Wikipedia for more information.

The old days
The first iteration of Windows prior to Windows 95, the OS was just a MS-DOS application with every limitation that it might have. It was a 16bit OS with very limited window management and capability. Then came Windows 95. The major difference was 32 bit support and the arrival the taskbar. Those two features make him a big boy and enabled new software possibilities. Windows 98 added Internet Explorer, some other features and bug fixes but was basically the same “kernel-wise”. At the same time, Windows NT 4 appeared. It used the same GUI but a different, more stable kernel created specially for enterprise. NT 4 was designed to run as a client OS requiring a Windows NT 4 Server somewhere on the network.

The less old days
Many people then upgraded their computer to Windows 2000 thinking it was the new iteration of Windows 98 but in those days, Microsoft had a three years release date time frame. You have to look deeper to discover that Windows 2000 is Windows NT 5. That’s why people found out it was god-like stable. It was an enterprise OS. There never was a Windows 2000 “Home Edition”. You had the choice between Professional, Server, Advanced server and Datacenter server. The major new feature it had which made people think that it was a personal OS was that it supported to run without a domain controller server. Windows NT could now run in stand-alone.

Then, later in the year 2000, Windows ME went out. Microsoft tried to integrate part of the NT kernel in the Windows 98 code base and it didn’t went well. Because of that, drivers had to be rewritten from scratch and hardware vendor generally botched them to release in time for the new OS. This caused a lot of headache and made the OS nearly unusable.

The still not quite current days
October 25, 2001… Windows XP hit the store. This iteration of windows is numbered Windows NT 5.1. Microsoft dropped the Windows 9x kernel and decide to make the NT one available to every one. They merged the end users feature from Windows ME with the enterprise features of 2000, updated the driver models, added a skin and that’s about it. For more than 60% of the Windows XP user pool, there was nothing new in XP aside from a skin and… YES! A lots of headache too! Nearly 90% of the drivers needed to be rewritten, an other time, from scratch because of the new driver models. The first year was a big no-no for XP. A lots of people like me who had a pretty fast and stable Windows 2000 configuration where forced to keep it for an other 6 month. Installing XP on my computer took about 8 hours and in the end, I didn’t even had all the driver I needed. Microsoft broke their 3 years time frame by releasing an early version Windows XP to recover from the Windows ME’s disaster. End result : XP is not that much better!

During the first XP years, Microsoft finalized the product and released Windows XP SP1 one year and a half later… During this time, hardware vendors had the time to make new drivers that competed NT 4 quality and rumors that Microsoft would stop making operating system had the time to spread. SP1 was quickly adopted by all the unlucky enterprise who bought an original Windows XP version. The update made Windows XP work like it always have should and people was happy with it. Just the support for USB 2.0 (released 2 years before) was worth it.

Then, something went wrong. Microsoft decided to add a new feature to the Windows Vista build which required to rewrite the whole OS from the ground up. It’s a well used feature that was, at the time, in every other OS : A Desktop Windows Manager (or DWM). OS X, that was first released on 24 of march 2001, 5 months before Windows XP, even had a DWM called Quartz. Linux had one since before Windows 98! Windows was way behind and some visual glitches that those kind of component solved years ago.

This feature was necessary to make Windows Vista a success so they put it in thus breaking the the 3 years time frame. This is the first reason why Windows Vista was badly accepted by the end users. Since a computer generally have a life span of 4 years, it was the first time people had to buy a new computer without new features excepted from performance gain. From this time, XP was now stated as the fastest OS in the world. On the other side, OS X 10.3 which had plenty of new features, just got out and was the last version before Apple dropped support for older and slower Macintosh G3 computers. Linux started to add memory/cpu intensive visual effects. And Windows was still the same… Same features with the same system requirement as in 2001 but … hey! We are in 2004 now! Computers are about 16 times faster that they where! No doubt XP is running fast on this good old Pentium 4 HT or AMD Athlon XP barton.

Windows Vista build 3790 code-name Longhorn D1
Here we are. A brand new Windows with… brand new driver models! Indeed, to support the new DWM, the video driver model need to be updated. The old audio driver model doesn’t even support more than a 44.1 kHz sampling rate at 16 bit which is CD quality (very bad for DVD or HD movie playback) so it need an update too. The new network stack need a compatible driver model to support network locations, new security features and protocols. The disk controller driver model doesn’t even support the AHCI standard so that’s an other one who need to be updated.

Bottom line, The final version of Windows Vista will be a new Windows ME. Or will it? To prevent this to happen, Microsoft planned a very big promotional event (the bigger ever at that time) and decided to roll out beta version publicly and even encouraged people to try it. That way, bugs that could occurred at release would be remove and requested features and modifications could be added. Indeed, it was the fist Windows where the end user actively participated its development. This was the second reason why Windows Vista failed at gaining market share. Hardware vendors, fearing of all the new features of those driver models, didn’t started to work before Windows was released. This caused the same problem that XP had before SP1 : Bad hardware support. It also cause an other unanticipated repercussion. Yes, people whom tried it was starving to have more. But the others who just tested the beta for a minute, without even knowing the meaning of the word beta, said it was slow and buggy. In one word : crap.

Windows Vista beta 2 build 5600
The beta rolled out for a while and a lot of new features where added to the OS. A great bunch of those features where directly aimed at the home user, copying the Apple’s iLife suite. It was the first Microsoft OS that enabled you to really do something with you computer without buying or installing additional softwares. This was, strangely enough, the fourth reason why Vista was badly accepted. There was an ENORMUS number of new stuff in it compared to any other Windows OS. Still, people expected it to be as small as XP or 2000.

I want to point that OS X is even bigger than Vista requiring at least 2 GB of ram (recommended 4 GB) and eating up to 16 GB of disk space where Vista need 10 GB. In comparison, XP used 800mb when installed from scratch and less than 3 GB with SP3. So if you decided to move to Macintosh because of that, you where mistaken. It’s not how much memory you have, it’s how you manage it and that’s where OS X is better than Windows. Simple applications can take up to 400mb of ram! Safari, for instance, was taking 344mb of ram when I wrote this post and still, everything is fluid.

Windows Vista SP1
Windows Vista, as Windows XP, had bad driver support until SP1. At that time, about 98% of the hardware had Windows Vista’s driver which is 20 % more than XP SP3 actually has. Hardware vendor started to use more and more of Vista’s new capability and began to develop Vista only stuff. Some times, they manage to make it work on XP using custom softwares and a lots of hacking everywhere but those aren’t needed on Vista. You just plug in the device and it work. A good example is Turbo-Memory imbedded in many laptop. Just like Hybrid-Drive, they can’t work on XP since they rely on a Vista technology called Ready-Boost.

Here we are
That’s the end of my history class. I hope you’ve learned something; Maybe like, lets try it with an open mind and then we’ll see. Next time, I’ll continue to go on in time and will talk about some future stuff (aka Windows 7 and OS X Snow Leopard) and will show you some numbers in the last part. Keep in mind that this is not a side by side comparison of OS X and Windows. I just talk about it because I want to show you stuff that you might not have think of before. After this series of post about Windows, I’ll get into the details of why OS X is generally a better operating system than Windows.

See you next week!

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And this made it’s way on TV…
I’m a mac user and I love Apple product but I’m not a fanboy. When I buy a computer, I look everywhere at everything and keep objective. It just happened that the latest ad from Microsoft suggest a HP HDX cost under 1 500$ when compared to an Apple computer. I made my way on to the HP and Apple web site and tried to customize the HDX so that it cost under 1 500$ and that it still offer every feature that a MacBook will. I couldn’t done it. The less I came up was close to 2 700$! It look like this ad is just a magnificent error. Here’s why…

A little comparison
Of course, they compare the HP HDX to a macbook and both computer doesn’t even have the same specs. The Macbook Pro is way more powerful at equivalent price and it don’t take 30 minutes just to customize your notebook.

Here is a list of some major differences between the basic HDX that was suggested during the ad and a Basic MacBook Pro :

Difference

HP

Apple

Processor

I honnestly don’t know where the 2.4 gHz came from. They probably took the T6600 which is not even on the Intel processor finder (Wow! Inexistent, old CPU)

At the end, you have to pay 2 662$ to have a 2 500$ MacBook Pro (lite of course since even with the gt130m 1gb they can’t compete with a 9600gt with built-in memory and much of the components are slower).

Bottom line? That’s exactly what you get with a HDX….

By the way, I’m not an Apple fanboy. It just happend that I took the time to compare both system and there is just no way a 1 500$ or less laptop can compare with a 2000$ laptop. With the info I have, I’d say that even the 9400m would be faster than the 9600 which is in the HDX. In the end, I could get an equal-performance laptop for 1800 where the HDX still cost more than 2600. The only plus of having an HDX is the blue-ray which not that use full. For instance, I never used the DVD drive on my laptop in one year excepted to install Windows on it. When every thing is on HDDs, there is just no need for it. HD movies? There’s iTunes store for that.